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Ok I think I get what you're saying... One thing about early post-canon (tbh the epilogues and HS2 kind of blend in my head) I felt was maybe too belabored was John's perspective being boring as hell. Like, I get we're driving the point home about this specific type of surburban ennui, and the meta on how that affects the discourse on what "matters," but stuff like "a portrait of a self-centered person" that is meant to be a take-down or deconstruction sometimes implicitly makes the argument that whatever banal thing they've got going on is the Most Important Ever because that's what we're focused on.

So if you want to make the point of "focusing on any of this is a slog and no one would genuinely want a narrative with these stakes" you might end up writing something that is still a slog but also doesn't effectively make that point?

Idk I have some trouble organizing my thoughts on it, but I think it's kind of unfortunate how I haven't really seen like...constructive criticism of post-canon from people who have more... Uhhh... "masochistic tastes" feels wrong, but y'know people who can say "the point is it was a slog and I loved it." Like I think there are standards we can hold our grating slogs to.